Respected British designer Jasper Morrison has learnt many things in the course of his career. For example, how to design products that create ‘atmosphere’, as he describes it, yet have longevity, and how to ignore the marketing machine that would turn design professionals into superstars. And how a violent pink can sometimes be, well, a bit too violent. Architonic spent some time at the recent Orgatec fair in Cologne with the thinking designer’s designer.

Epistolary. What a nice word, I thought. Waiting for Jasper Morrison to arrive for an interview I’d arranged with him at this year’s Orgatec fair in Cologne, I started to wonder whether talking to the respected British designer might not be such a good idea after all, and that perhaps I should have suggested a dialogue by exchange of email. Morrison is known, it’s fair to say, as not being the most loquacious of people – something which sits in stark contrast to his trenchant and insightful writing on design, published over the last two decades in the form of numerous books and essays.